Chains of Control in Agile Software Development

Although extant literature on control in software development provides interesting and rich insights, it also indicates existing constructs are, in some ways, inadequate as intellectual means to support investigation of control practices. Most importantly, current theorizing distinguishes between two types of formal controls (outcome and behavior) and two types of informal controls (clan and self), making it impossible to investigate informal outcome and behavior controls and formal clan and self-controls. We therefore introduce a deconstructed framework for describing management controls and apply it to a holistic examination of controls in a case study of a multi-site agile software development organization. The empirical examination revealed consequent controls across a process and multiple representations of control across hierarchical levels of analysis. As a result, we offer a refined, deconstructed framework for investigating control practices, and the concept of chains of control as a useful tool for examining control practices in software development